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Free
Ways To Promote Your Affiliate Program
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by:
Clay Mabbitt
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After
learning of the success many online businesses have had increasing
their sales with an affiliate program, you decided to follow suit. You
hammered out a compensation plan both encouraging to affiliates and
profitable to your business. You’ve got tracking software in place.
You’ve turned the key in the ignition of your marketing machine… and
nothing’s happening.
Your army of affiliates can be viewed metaphorically as a tree. Full
grown, it will thrive in rain and sunshine. Strong changing winds can
shake its branches, but the tree will continue to grow. In the early
seed stage, however, special care is needed if you want your tree to
break through the surface.
You spent a great deal of time, energy, and likely at least a little
money creating your affiliate program. You need to attract strong
affiliates that can rapidly build your customer base and return your
investment. How can you bring these powerful marketing dynamos into
your camp, ideally without drawing on your already diminished cash
reserves?
1.) Submit to Online Directories
The method that will show the most immediate increase in new affiliates
is listing your program in online affiliate directories. These
reference sites are the first stop for hungry potential affiliates
looking for the income opportunity that is going to allow them to quit
their 9 to 5 jobs. Many such directories exist, and obviously some will
bring you better results than others. Since submitting to almost all of
these directories is free, though, get listed on as many as you can.
Here are a few links to submission pages to get you started, but by no
means should you stop with just these few:
http://www.becomeanaffiliate.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi
http://www.affiliatesoftware.info/joinaffiliatedirectory.php
http://www.affiliatescreen.com/suggest_program.php
http://www.affiliatematch.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.2-tier.com/cgi-bin/add_url.cgi
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/links/add.cgi
http://www.earnfind.com/addprogram-howto.php
2.) Advertise in Your Own Newsletter
Hopefully you’ve been collecting email addresses from your website and
sending a regular newsletter to your visitors. (If not, read this
article:
http://www.zeromillion.com/ebiz/creating-an-email-newsletter.html) Your
newsletter subscribers are a precious handful of people that have
expressed direct interest in keeping abreast of the latest developments
with your product/service and company. Give them what they want! You
can kick off your affiliate program with an article in your newsletter
explaining the benefits and encouraging your subscribers to
participate. Your future newsletters can contain short blurbs about the
affiliate program and how it’s progressing to inform new subscribers
and remind your original readers.
3.) Post to Affiliate Forums and Newsgroups
Approach this method with caution. No one will be impressed if you post
a blatant advertisement or a plea to join your affiliate program. If
you find a forum that contains such messages, don’t even bother making
a post there. The forum probably isn’t moderated, and almost certainly
isn’t read by many people. The place to include information about your
website and program is in your profile (and in your signature line if
other posters do so). A serious forum, read by the type of people you
want to have as affiliates, will only contain posts with relevant and
useful content instead of advertising fluff messages.
How can you add relevant and useful content? The first step is to read
some of the existing posts and get a feel for the general personality
of the forum. At best, reading old posts will spark questions that can
be turned into relevant posts and generate interested responses. At
worst, you’ll see what’s been talked about recently, so you don’t make
the awkward mistake of asking a question that was answered a few days
ago.
If no topics come to mind after reading old posts, a possible strategy
is to ask for the advice of some experienced affiliates in how you
could improve your program. You’ll find different ideas on what
constitutes a solid compensation plan, tracking system, or incentive
program. Beyond getting attention for your program, this is a great
opportunity to improve your program by picking the brains of people
who’ve been in the game longer than you.
This list is obviously not comprehensive, but it contains a few forums
worth investigating:
http://www.ablake.net/forum/
http://iwiz2.richdad.com/jive/application2/forum.jsp?forum=33
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/forum/gforum.cgi?forum=7
About the Author
Clay Mabbitt writes articles about evaluating
online
money-making opportunities. Need in-depth reviews of
the latest affiliate programs? Find them at
http://www.affiliatescreen.com/
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